McGuire reflects on time at Dow Gardens

By Kelly Dame

Published 5:29 am, Sunday, January 19, 2014

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NEIL BLAKE | nblake@mdn.net

Marty McGuire, the managing director at Dow Gardens, a tour to the Leadership Midland group in this Daily News file photo. McGuire gave the group a brief history of the property, which was one of their stops as they toured the city. At the start of the tour, McGuire joked that walking backwards was one of the requirements of his job.

Marty McGuire readily admits he was a nontraditional choice to lead the Dow Gardens for the last seven years, but it turns out his take on drawing more visitors fit the master plan after all.

McGuire, who is retiring from the helm in March, landed the job after retiring from 30 years with the City of Midland, including work as the director of parks and recreation, and director of public services.

“It’s been a fun, enjoyable run,” he said.

The gardens began in the late 1800s with Herbert H. Dow. McGuire explained people really started touring in the late 1920s and 1930s, with organized tours led by groups like the Boy Scouts.

By the mid-1970s, Herbert H. Dow II led an effort to make the gardens more public. He hired landscape architect John W. Campbell from Charlevoix, who was on site for a year and also visited other gardens to develop a master plan. Alden B. Dow was drawn in to participate in the redevelopment of the gardens, and former gardens director Doug Chapman was hired in 1974 to develop the gardens, all in keeping with the original philosophy. He retired in 2007.

“Doug’s focus was on developing the gardens, developing the product, if you will,” McGuire said. The idea at hand was to make sure there’s always something around a turn to draw the eye, such as what visitors experience along the twists and turns of the meandering streamside walk. Also introduced were plants that don’t typically thrive in the area, such as the eastern red bud, weeping katsura tree and the Kentucky coffeetree.

“They were nurtured and pushed,” he said.

By the end of 1974 — on Dec. 11, to be exact, Campbell’s master plan was completed.

Recently, behind his desk in a bright office overlooking the grounds, McGuire flipped through the pages of Campbell’s master plan, in search of a point he found very interesting.

“There were some long term goals set ... and one of the long range goals was to raise attendance,” he said, adding the gardens recently marked the number in the report — 120,000. Actually, McGuire pointed out, the number was bested in 2012 with 129,959 people visiting.

“That’s one of the things we kind of measure since I’ve been here,” he said.

In 2006, the gardens hosted 69,402 visitors; in 2013, 124,568 were counted. Those figures track an 80 percent increase in traffic over the 110 carefully thought out and tended acres, McGuire said.

Those numbers are the result of McGuire’s non-horticulturist vision for the gardens.

He began by looking at where the attendance was and breaking down the numbers. During that process, he found about 40 percent of the garden’s visitors came for events — Butterflies in Bloom, weddings and other special programs.

“I figured if 40 percent of your attendance is tied to events, we should increase that,” he said of the special events. He and the staff began by building on the existing programs.

The kids programs were increased and the number of plots of childrens gardens was upped from 45 to 84.

In addition to domestic butterflies at the annual spring event, South American butterflies were added in 2009, and Asian and African butterflies were added in 2012.

Weddings also draw visitors, and while the numbers were good in 2010 and 2011, McGuire found a way to better it by setting blocks of time, rather than holding to the previous limitation of having one wedding a day. Now, there are three time blocks in a day.

“Things like that allowed us to expand a successful program,” he said, adding it worked so well the staff found themselves turning couples away. The answer to that was to add a second side.

“So now on a typical summer Saturday, we’ll do six weddings,” McGuire said.

Other programs introduced during McGuire’s leadership include music in the gardens, which features lunchtime concerts, and picnics in the gardens.

The ideas came about as McGuire pictured things he could see visitors wanting to do, and taking those thoughts to the staff for their view. Sometimes, he said, they found the reasons to say no to the new ideas were more tied to a developing garden rather than a developed garden. One example is picnics, he said, pointed out litter is tougher on a developing garden.

Not that littering is a problem at the Dow Gardens, he said, sharing one of his favorite stories illustrating the respect visitors show to the property involves a prom night with 3,400 visitors. Upon hearing the huge number of guests, he and the staff conducted their normal Monday walk through expecting to see things that needed work, like trash pick up. McGuire was pleased to find the respectful visitors left nothing more to clean up than the considerably smaller number of normal weekend visitors would have.

“That’s one of the neatest stories,” of the amount of respect the community shows for the gardens, he said, which is another trait of a developed garden.

Other events cooked up during McGuire’s tenure — like Art in the Gardens, and beer and wine tastings — were aimed at loftier goals.

“Those were all an effort to introduce the gardens to a new audience,” he said, adding maybe someone who came for a concert would fall in love with the gardens. “That’s all been reasonably successful.”

The high attendance number for 2012 also reflects that year’s unseasonably warm weather, he said, pointing out there were summer-like days in March.

Yet another prong to drawing more people to the garden paths is accessibility, which was not really a consideration when the property was in it infancy.

“Not everyone can walk 110 acres,” he said. “We introduced the cart tours everyday in the summer at 12:45 … A neat thing is to have people who come in and say they haven’t been here in 20 years because they don’t walk and get to see the gardens.”

A highlight of the work to make the gardens accessible is the new path around the pond next to the conservatory, allowing an alternative to the old streamside path ending - a bridge.

Not only is McGuire quick to call himself nontraditional for the Dow Gardens leadership role, he’s fast on the draw to point at the support and teamwork he’s received from the horticulturists, gardens staff and foundation board.

“They’re a real talented bunch,” he said, adding they’ve been open to new things while preserving the excitement of horticulture in new ways.

“When I was hired, it was as stretch,” because of his background which did not include any horticulture. “It could have been a disaster … They were very receptive,” and because of that, the team was able to do some new things.

One of the changes is that the horticulturist in charge of each area of the gardens submits their own ideas for that area, rather than making a grand plan for the gardens. “So if you look at things, you can see different styles and ideas throughout the gardens,” McGuire said. “It really showcases the gardens.”